I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to both a method and system for locating a wave, such as a sound wave, within a defined area.
II. Description of Related Art
There are many situations in the automotive industry and elsewhere where it is desirable to identify predetermined sounds and then locate the position of those sounds with respect to the vehicle. For example, emergency vehicles, such as ambulances and police cars, often travel at high speeds. Furthermore, such emergency vehicles often do not obey the standard traffic rules. For example, such emergency vehicles are not required to stop at stop signs, red traffic lights and, in some cases, even travel on the wrong side of the road in order to reach the emergency situation as fast as possible. As such, such emergency vehicles may appear at unexpected locations to other drivers of the road.
In order to avert a potential safety hazard, it would desirable to alert the driver of the automotive vehicle of the position of such emergency vehicles as well as other potentially hazardous conditions, such as a vehicle in the “blind spot.”
There have been previously known systems which utilize one or more microphones in order to detect and warn the vehicle driver of the presence of an emergency vehicle by detecting a siren or similar sound from the emergency vehicle. These previously known systems, however, have merely used the amplitude of the received sound signal of the siren of the emergency vehicle in order to warn the vehicle driver. These previously known systems thus fail to account for reflections, echoes and the like of the sound wave from the emergency vehicle siren and are thus unable to accurately locate the position of the emergency vehicle or other desired detected sound.